As defined within ETSI TR 102 216 V3.0.0 (2003-09), UICC which is neither an abbreviation nor an acronym, designates a smart card that conforms to the specifications written and maintained by the ETSI Smart Card Platform project.
Further to its conventional telephone function, a mobile phone may be used for exchanging information with a contactless device by using a contactless communication protocol.
This permits to exchange information between the contactless device and elements located within the mobile phone. Plenty of applications are thus possible such as mobile ticketing in public transport (the mobile phone acts as a boarding pass) or mobile payment (the mobile phone acts as a debit/credit payment card).
Near Field Communication or NFC is a short range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables such exchange of data between two contactless devices over a short distance, for example 10 centimeters.
NFC is an open platform technology standardized in ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 21481 but incorporates a variety of pre-existing standards including ISO/IEC 14443 protocol type A and type B.
Mobile phone manufacturers are interested in connecting two different auxiliary elements to NFC chips. As a matter of fact, having two separate auxiliary elements allows two clearly separate applications coming from different issuers (banks, transport operators, telephone operators . . . ).
ETSI TS 102 613 is a standard disclosing in particular the principle of a so-called Single Wire Protocol (SWP). The SWP is a bit oriented point-to-point communication protocol between a contactless front end (CLF) also called a NFC controller, and a UICC. However, this single wire protocol as defined in ETSI TS 102 613 permits only the communication between one contactless element, for example one NFC controller and one UICC.
A first solution for managing information exchange between a NFC controller and two elements consists in providing a NFC controller with one SWP interface for secure elements based on SWP-UICC technology and a second interface (for example a NFC Wired Interface: NFC-WI) for proprietary secure elements. However, such solution makes the design of a NFC controller more complex as an additional interface has to be managed in a time critical environment.
A second solution consists in offering NFC controllers provided with two SWP interfaces. This solution would allow using of two secure elements provided with SWP-UICC technology but again, it will make the design of the NFC controller more complex as an additional interface has to be managed.